Heather Shaff – Designer

I enjoy creating attractive and unique book designs for publishers, packagers, and authors based on the desired look, book length, and budget. I am skilled at designing complicated technical, scholarly, medical and legal titles, but I very much enjoy designing and typesetting trade fiction and non-fiction titles, too. In addition, I do some cover design and logo design, and I size and correct illustrations, and figure out best placement and layout for ultimate readability.

I work primarily in Adobe Creative Cloud: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Reader, but am also proficient with Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Managed the Spring and Fall lists of New Paperbacks for Harvard University Press, in addition to creating interior and cover designs for assorted new HUP titles. Created a budget for each paperback title in the Spring and Fall lists, sent each title out for bid and selected an appropriate printer and manufacturer. Worked with printers and manufacturers to assure each vendor met HUP's desired schedule and quality standards. Approved two and four-color covers and interiors on press, both locally and internationally, to ensure color quality and accuracy. Hired and managed freelance designers as needed. Performed additional office duties such as managing paperback schedules and processing invoices, and worked to resolve manufacturing and scheduling problems while ensuring accurate communication between departments.

Managed teams of editors, designers, illustrators, photo researchers, and manufacturing buyers in the production of El-Hi (Elementary and High School) textbooks for the McDougal Littel division of Houghton Mifflin. Created schedules, and organized and facilitated meetings of teams for each book. Reported development status of each title to the Chicago office of McDougal Littel in order to schedule production and manufacturing.

Managed an independent list of new legal and medical titles for Production. Created interior and cover designs, and produced layouts and specs for each. Sized illustrations and created layouts for composition. Performed castoffs as needed to ensure titles would fit the desired number of book pages. Reported on the status of my projects at meetings and worked with editorial and sales departments as needed to ensure titles came in on time, within budget, and with the desired look indicated by the sales team. Designed and produced ancillary materials, such as CDs and study guides, as needed.

Assisted the production department in the development and creation of legal treatises and textbooks. Learned how to create schedules, bid projects out for composition, and keep track of costs. Learned the basics of interior book design, first through the use of dummies and tracing paper and later via computer using Quark XPress. Learned how to write specifications for book composition, and create castoffs to determine book lengths. Assisted the department in day-to-day activities such as mailing manuscripts to authors and typesetters, paying invoices, and creating and updating the department's production schedule.